Creative American Folk Art Museum
February 23, 2011
Why can I not get my mortgage loan approved? Because some borrow more money than they can pay back. In June 2009, the American Folk Art Museum defaulted on payments for the $32 million loan they borrowed to construct a new building. According to a Bloomberg report, the museum “has missed a total of $3.7 million in payments to a debt service fund for the new premises, a Jan. 5 filing to bondholders said. Total missed payments are up by about $2 million in the past year — averaging $7,700 each weekday.”
Still, the museum announced that it would not be selling it collections to pay off the debt. How could they, if deaccessioning for anything but collection development is a taboo in the industry and is sure to make any institution a cultural pariah?
“We are planning our way out of this,” said Executive Director Maria Ann Conelli Conelli. Now, the museum announced that it will stage an off-site exhibition in Italy during the Venice Biennale, starting Jun. 1 2011, which may indeed prove the best alternative. According to New York Times, the museum will display works by African-American artists at the Fondacio dei Tedeschi.
Source: ArtInfo; Bloomberg.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and is not meant to provide legal advice. Readers should not construe or rely on any comment or statement in this article as legal advice. For legal advice, readers should seek an attorney.